Grilling Sides - What Ya' Got?

[HumbleHomeCook]

For a lot of us, grilling season is just starting to bloom. Understandably, the main course always gets the attention but KKF'ers are a sophisticated bunch and know that sides matters!

Whether it's your favorite mac-n-cheese or baked beans, from slaw to heck, sauces, let's post up here and inspire our fellow forumites.

Recipes, videos you saw, questions, this is the place.

 

[AT5760]

I love curtido with barbecue. Mixes genres, but to me it kicks cole slaw’s ass all day. This recipe is a start, tweak sour, sweet, salt, and heat to preference.

I also like potatoes with burgers or bbq chicken. Take a foil pan, a bit of water, layer a thinly sliced onion, s&p, then thinly sliced potatoes. Cover in foil and set on the cool part of the grill and let them steam and lightly scorch the onions. Dead simple and better than you’d think it would be.

This BBQ sauce has gotten steady positive feedback over the years:

 

[Johnsmyname]

Cucumber salad - cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, maybe bell pepper, oil vinegar, herbs.

Baked beans

Corn salad

Coke slaw with apples in it

Garlic bread

Any pickled or fermented vegetables

Grilled peppers - Italian long peppers with anchovy and bread crumbs is life changing. Eat with steak.

Grilled corn salad - spice it up as a street corn salad

Grilled fruit

Watermelon salad - mint, feta

Bean salads - mixed beans cold with vinegar, onions, etc.

Vietnamese cabbage salad

 

[Heckel7302]

Ambrosia salad. Taste of my childhood.

https://www.modernhoney.com/ambrosia-salad/

 

[Just a DK]

Fav grill side -> Boiled Carolina Rice / Grilled Corn / Fried Black Beans / Green onions / Salt and Lime

Otherwise its just whatever veg looks good at farmers market salt and grilled.

I also make cole slaw with 50% vinegar and 50% lemon or shredded kohlrabi with black vinegar and lao gan ma.

 

[SwampDonkey]

I love a red cabbage slaw with red wine vinegar, and a teeny bit of cane syrup as the sweetener in the slaw sauce. Just gives a bit of depth more than something like agave or white sugar.

Should be obvious...but I put my beans in a cast iron underneath whatever meat I'm smoking so the fat drips in. If you've only got a single deck/don't want all that extra fat, just leaving them on the smoker while the meat rests for an hour is good enough to impart all that goodness. As always, chunks > chips by a mile for better smoke, and pecan+oak is an orgasmic combination on pork or beef.

Finally got a grill pan and I have absolutely fallen in love with asparagus tossed in olive oil s+p then grill (panned) over charcoal. Gets that good hydrocarbon flavor and crisps them. Takes like 8 minutes over direct heat. Tried the same method with cubed gold potatoes and it took for damn ever...so those are off. Squash/zucchini work well though

 

[Just a DK]

Should be obvious...but I put my beans in a cast iron underneath whatever meat I'm smoking so the fat drips in.

I stopped doing this and put it in a aluminum pan next for smoky flavor for health reasons.... trying to keep to the olive oil and reduce the animal fat intake.

 

[panda]

balsamic

 

[Ruso]

balsamic

Hows the trip?

 

[boomchakabowwow]

Ambrosia salad. Taste of my childhood.

https://www.modernhoney.com/ambrosia-salad/

ooo..i should add this to that other list of my unfavorables.

 

[boomchakabowwow]

raw beet slaw.

roasted potatos. hasselback em, if i am feeling fancy.

and i am Cantonese. white rice.....